Our Europe
A lamentably mistitled book: this is a book about France, about the need for far-reaching reforms in France, by Delors and a team of collaborators, originally published in French in 1988. But such is the perspicacity of analysis that the study is still eminently worth reading-even for an insight into the intellectual and political sensitivities of Delors, who has all too often been depicted as a super-Eurocrat. The book deals with the great problems that beset the relations of French society and the French state, with possible solutions to unemployment and of course with proposals about Europe. En passant, this striking tidbit: "In 1984 Frenchmen over the age of 15 spent, altogether, more hours watching television than working." At the heart, however, is the realization of "the internal delegitimization of the state. . . . The French no longer have confidence in their state." By now, this is true for most of the European or OECD countries, even if the causes for disaffection are diverse.
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